Alibaba Group’s Singles’ Day” is a bonanza of billions of dollars. But to get the money flowing, the company knows it needs to put on a show.

Actress Nicole Kidman and musician Pharrell were among the participants in a four-hour live spectacular that enlisted the talents of 789 different performers and a crew of 2,900 and is streamed to millions of Chinese consumers eager to use the e-commerce giant’s sites to scoop up everything from appliances to shellfish. Analysts have estimated that last year’s event resulted in the sale of $17.7 billion worth of goods and products. Alibaba says the event is more than 18 times the size of Amazon’s Prime Day and two-and-a-half times bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

“It’s kind of as old as yesterday and as modern as tomorrow,” said David Hill, the veteran producer who led Fox Sports and supervised the last season of “American Idol” for Fox Broadcasting in the U.S. Hill oversees the mega-promotion, and said his job is to piece together elements that would have fit well into an old-fashioned variety show, and weave them together with moments aimed at sparking interactivity with a digital audience. “Of all the stuff I’ve done, it’s one of the most interesting shows,” he said. “The structure of the show is huge acts, a huge cast, interspersed with the opportunity to win money through various games, all played on mobile phones.”

This is Hill’s second go-round producing the event.

The challenge for a producer of “Singles’ Day” is that the success of the event is known immediately. Executives can monitor sales activity in real time – and the dollars that come with it. Some of the other big events Hill has supervised were far easier, he estimated. When it comes to the Super Bowl, he noted, most of the action is in the hands of the two competing teams and the National Football League. But for the Alibaba event, he has to keep the momentum going, using everything from Blue Man Group to a guy who races rows of falling dominoes.

“It is a mega-show. It’s seriously unlike any other show in the world, in terms of just how big it is,” said Hill. “It’s like this runaway train.”

Alibaba estimated that more than 140,000 brands took part in the 2017 event offering 15 million different products.

Sign Up for Daily Insider Newsletter

In an unusual move, Entertainment One plans to share TV pilot scripts for two Wattpad stories it’s adapting as series with the most passionate fans of the original tales — bringing them into the development process. Under its partnership with Wattpad, the Toronto-based production and media company is developing shows based on dystopian drama “The [...]

Facebook faced growing criticism this week over its decision not to remove a video that was doctored to suggest that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was intoxicated during a recent public event. The video, which has been viewed more than 2.5 million times, had been slowed down notably, giving the impression that Pelosi was slurring her [...]

To promote next month’s premiere of “Black Mirror” season 5, Netflix is launching a short video series — “Little Black Mirror,” with a cast that includes an ensemble of Latinx social-media stars. The three “mini-stories,” aimed at Spanish-speaking audiences, are inspired by the tech-dystopian universe of Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones’ anthology series. “Little Black [...]

Twitter permanently suspended the accounts of Ed and Brian Krassenstein — progressive political activists famous for trolling Donald Trump and his supporters — with the company alleging the brothers used bogus accounts to amplify their reach on the platform. “The Twitter Rules apply to everyone,” a Twitter rep said in a statement. “Operating multiple fake [...]

Snap wants to up Snapchat’s music game. The company has been in negotiations with music companies including the big three — Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — to license song catalogs for the Snapchat app, according to two industry sources familiar with the talks, confirming a Wall Street Journal report. [...]

T-Mobile is getting ready to raise prices for subscribers who have taken advantage of its “Netflix On Us” promotion: The mobile carrier will begin charging existing customers who have participated in the promotion an additional $2 per month to account for Netflix’s recent price increase. Consumers will see their bill go up starting on 6/2. [...]

Snap continues to fill out the ranks of its revamped leadership team: The Snapchat parent tapped Oona King, most recently Google’s director of diversity strategy and a former member of British Parliament with the Labour Party, as its first VP of diversity and inclusion. King, who starts at Snap on June 11, is also the [...]